Another U.S. scandal- More Gulags in Kosovo
11/26/2005 3:40:00 PM GMT
It appears more and more that the U.S. gulags, mostly out of reach of human rights groups and international humanitarian organisations by virtue of being offshore, are now a permanent fixture in the shadowy underpinnings of the American intelligence apparatus.
In an interview with France's Le Monde newspaper, the Council of Europe's Commissioner for Human Rights, Alvaro Gil Robles, revealed yesterday that he witnessed a "small Guantanamo" at Camp Bondsteel, used by the U.S. military in Kosovo.
"The center looked like Guantanamo on a small scale. Explanations are still needed," Robles told the French newspaper.
The Council of Europe, which guarantees human rights in its 46 member states, is currently investigating allegations of CIA-run secret prisons, according to the Mail and Guardian Online.
The camp, which acts as the main detention centre for KFOR, the Nato-led Kosovo peacekeeping force deployed in the United Nations-administered province in June 1999, resembled "a smaller version of Guantanamo", he told France's Le Monde newspaper, referring to the U.S. centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where hundreds of terrorism suspects remain detained without trial.
Accompanied by Commander of the multinational forces for Kosovo (KFOR), Lieutenant-General, Marcel Valentin, Gil-Robles inspected the centre, located within the U.S. military's Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo, in September 2002, to investigate reports of extrajudicial arrests by NATO-led peacekeepers, he said, describing seeing "small wooden huts ringed by tall barbed wire", each housing "between 15 and 20 prisoners ... wearing orange boiler-suits like the ones worn by Guantanamo inmates".
"The prisoners were mostly sitting, some locked up in isolation cells. Some of them were bearded. Some were reading the Qur’an," Robles said about the camp.
Robles added that he was “shocked” by the conditions at the facility, located south of Pristina and operated exclusively by the U.S. military, adding to the mounting international criticism Bush’s government had been facing over the abuse of prisoners and what it calls “terror suspects”, Washington has been recently accused of maintaining a network of so-called "black sites" -- covert CIA detention centres in several countries in Asia and eastern Europe -- where suspects are subjected to heinous abuse and torture.
But Robles said he can’t assert that Camp Bondsteel is linked to the CIA operations.
"But I do believe that an explanation should be given for this base in Kosovo, as for other potentially suspect sites" in Europe, he told the paper.
The official leading the probe said Friday that Romania, which rights groups have labelled a likely site for one of the secret centres, was not hosting a large, Guantanamo-style jail.
Speaking at a news conference in Bucharest, Dick Marty, the official leading the Council of Europe probe into the CIA-run network of prisons, said he was "convinced that there are no Guantanamos in Romania".
"I don't think it would be possible to set up a centre like Guantanamo in Europe," said Marty. "If Romanian officials tell me they are not hosting a Guantanamo, I trust them."
Detainees at Camp Bondsteel have no access to lawyers, and don’t fall under any legal jurisdiction, according to Le Monde.
"A female U.S. soldier, on the prison staff, told me that she had just arrived after having served at the Guantanamo base," The rights envoy said, adding that he decided to speak out following reports of the CIA secret prisons in Eastern Europe and the launch of The Council of Europe investigation into whether they do exist.
Numerous stories that prove that prisoners held in U.S. custody in Guantanamo and elsewhere were subject to abuse and torture have already leaked out, but have been mostly portrayed by Bush’s admin as fantasies from bad actors.
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